THE HIT HAMMER: The Rolling Stones' "Angie"

(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)

The Rolling Stones - "Angie"

Hit Number 1: October 20, 1973

Stay at Number 1: 1 Week

The first thing I think of when I hear the name Rolling Stones is far from anything going on in "Angie". I hear some hard rock, I picture some wild live shows and a 77-year-old Mick Jagger running around on stage acting like he's 25 and claiming he can't get no satisfaction no matter how hard he tries. Ballads are not a Stones staple, but they were something they would do every now and then. (Ex. "Ruby Tuesday" from 1967) However, just like a lot of ballads, songs like "Ruby Tuesday" don't impress me too much. They're the kinds of songs that gently breeze past, and once they're over, I don't get the urge to listen to them again. "Angie" is somewhere in between. Sure, it's considered to be a ballad, but there's a hint of haunting glamour with it that sticks with me every time I listen to it. It's one of the most unique Stones songs because of that.

As with any song that has a specific name in it, you get your share of people who wonder if "Angie" is based on a real person with that name. That mystery's never truly been solved, and lead guitarist Keith Richards only made it more confusing when he said it was, then years later said it wasn't. He claimed in 1993 that the song's name inspiration came from his young daughter, who was named Dandelion Angela, but then in 2010 he said the song's name was picked at random, before he even knew the gender of his upcoming baby. Either way, as some might believe, Angie is not the name of one of the many former lovers of Mick Jagger, and it was just a namesake for the song, whether Angie was a real person or not. The actual story of "Angie", which is a song about an abruptly ending love affair, is based off of Jagger's relationship with fellow singer Marianne Faithful. I suppose Angie just has a better ring to it than Marianne.

"Angie" is lyrically a very sad song, but it doesn't necessarily sound sad. Jagger, Richards and company make the song into a natural heartbreak, almost like the narrator and this Angie girl should have known that this day was going to come eventually. They've tried to make everything work out, but they're no longer happy. Their dreams have been destroyed, they have no money and they're pretty much just miserable. The narrator tries to comfort Angie by telling her she's beautiful, but there's no making someone feel better when life goes south, as it does for these two in the song. Again, the whole thing is sad, but the delivery by the band isn't. Jagger contains himself, but you can tell he wants so bad to break out into that signature yowl of his. Richards slowly plays his guitar, along with some scant piano riffs that still make their presence well-known on the song. It's a hard rock band trying to pull off a sad breakup ballad, but it's obvious that the band has no real clue how to pull that off on "Angie".

This is actually a rare case where it's good that a band doesn't succeed in their goals. If someone were to take a song like "Angie", and they gloop the hell out of it to try and make it sad, chances are I'm left reviewing a song that bores me. But "Angie" is far from boring. It's what I would call a "melancholic banger." It's not one of those tear-the-house-down rockers you sometimes hear me talking about on here, but it's still easy to get into it. I just like how everything sounds together: Jagger's lead vocal, the guitar intro/riff, the piano ripples; everything fits together like a puzzle. And I still don't think it's exactly what the band was going for, I still think they were going for a true ballad, similar to what we heard on "Ruby Tuesday". But when you can turn a depressing song into something more interesting, and do it unintentionally, that's impressive. That's artistic stuff.

GRADE: 8/10